


Cain Cries

by chollarcho



Category: Starfighter (Comic)
Genre: Crying, Dinosaurs, M/M, crackfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 13:11:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chollarcho/pseuds/chollarcho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set loosely in asocialconstruct's Basic stories.  James (Encke) and Sacha (Cain) try to have a romantic shore leave weekend, until Sacha gets sick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cain Cries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asocialconstruct](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asocialconstruct/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Before](https://archiveofourown.org/works/518195) by [asocialconstruct](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asocialconstruct/pseuds/asocialconstruct). 



> Cain Cries  
> Or: I Was Not Expecting a Dinosaur
> 
> For asocialconstruct
> 
> Starfighter Gift Exchange, Summer 2013

So.  For two weeks during basic training, the whole camp clambered aboard a small vessel and practiced living in space—flying starfighters, using sim chambers, and cranking supper out of the Alliance food generators.

Eight and Fifty enjoyed the adventure, their first taste of what their Alliance jobs would really entail.  They took pleasure in the excursion even more when the artificial gravity broke down during the second night and they had the chance to try zero-gravity sex.  It did not work very well, but they gave their best effort five times in a row.

At the end of the first week, the little ship docked for refueling at a small, distant colony, and the whole camp was given the weekend off.  Eight promptly reserved a hotel room in a town near the base and whisked Fifty away for the weekend, just the two of them, James and Sacha.

\--

“You know, everyone else is staying in Redfield, and I heard there’s gonna be a drunk-bowling party on Saturday night,” Sacha whined in the hover-taxi.  His cheeks were pink from excitement, in spite of his bad attitude.

“Baby, they’ll come back with twenty broken feet from dropping the bowling balls, and then you can climb the ranks all the more quickly.  Besides, I think we need a little private time together.”  James cleared his throat awkwardly and forced himself to stop plucking at the cracked pleather taxi seats.  He gripped Sacha’s shoulder and fixed him with a serious glare.  “We…are going to have a romantic weekend.”

Sacha’s cheeks brightened, but he managed to raise a skeptical eyebrow.  “Really?  Uh, okay—well, what are we supposed to do?”

“I dunno, like, fuck and eat breakfast in bed and give each other massages.”

That sent Sacha’s brows plummeting into a scowl.  “I hate your massages.  Your hands are too fucking strong.”

“We’re trying to have a romantic weekend, so you’re gonna have to put up with it.”

“There you go with the _we_ again, making all my decisions for me!  Maybe I just want some drunk-bowling without the romantic weekend—”

“Well, I’d rather have more to show from leave than a bunch of blurry Spacebook photos of Thirty bowling gutter balls!”

While Sacha gave his argument serious consideration, the taxi driver piped up helpfully, “When I’m planning a romantic weekend, I like to include a picnic and a nature hike, maybe some stargazing, maybe read a little poetry—”

“Thanks, but we’re good,” Sacha interrupted, loudly.  “Eight, if you try to massage my feet I’ll kick you in the mouth,” he whispered, sultry and sweet.

“Aw, baby,” James murmured, pulling Sacha close, warm and skinny and too much hair.  This weekend was going to be the most romantic ever, for sure.

\--

Supper and breakfast in bed—check.  Massage fiasco followed by Sacha crying cutely followed by makeup sex—check.  Additional rounds of sex in a variety of positions facilitated by ten extra pillows from housekeeping’s supply closet—check, check, check.  By mid-morning Saturday, the weekend was already a success.

James lounged across the foot of the bed, watching Sacha wave his naked ass around while building a pillow fort.  “So you want to go outside to get some lunch in a bit or what?” he asked.

“Hotel food’s not bad.”  Sacha settled himself comfortably against the elaborate bedding configuration.  He’d been lethargic since before the shore leave began—unusual for Sacha, but James figured the weekend was all about relaxation.  Sacha gave a tiny shiver and pulled the blankets around him.

James snorted at his lazy, cocooned lover.  “There’s a taco place in town that everyone raves about on Spacebook.”

Sacha perked up at the mention of tacos, but then offered a tempting smile.  “Wanna have a bit more fun before we go out?  Let’s try something new.”  He trailed his fingers down his chest slowly, watching James’ eyes fixed on his hand.

“Y-yeah…”

Sacha crawled to him, bent close to whisper in his ear:  “You know what would be fun?  Me topping.”

James tried not to wince.  No fucking way was he doing that, but he didn’t want to ruin their teasing good mood with a flat-out refusal.  “Okay, baby, I’ll let you if you let me cut off that stupid mullet.”

“What?”  Incredulous, Sacha pulled away to stare at James.

“Said if you want to top, then first you have to get a haircut—”

“Heard you the first time.  That’s a messed-up deal, and the answer is _fuck no_ ,” Sacha snapped sourly.  “Nobody touches the hair.  It’s my hottest feature, ass coming in close second.  People just can’t get enough of Sacha’s hair,” he said proudly.

“Is that so?” James muttered after a pause, doubtful.

“You bet your scrawny mohawk it’s true.  In school, the other guys were so jealous of its badassness, they dunked my head in the toilet at least once a week.  But they couldn’t take down my mane even one notch.”  Sacha ruffled his fingers through his thick hair and shook it out, achieving impressive volume.  James prayed that Sacha did not intend to add hairspray to his beauty regimen at any time in the future.

James faked disappointment with a gusty sigh.  “Well, then, baby, I guess you’re not topping today.  Let’s go fuck in the shower.  That’s new,” he suggested, and hoped the water would flatten Sacha’s hair, for a little while at least.

Sacha sulked, but followed James to the shower.  “I guess it would be fun to do it in the shower,” he grumbled.  “You’d better wash my hair.  _Don’t_ massage my scalp.”

That James could manage.  “Of course.  Didn’t I say this was a romantic weekend?”

\--

He thought he could manage it.  But Sacha in the shower turned out as difficult as Sacha out of the shower.  He fussed because the water was too hot, then that it was too cold.  James’s hands were too strong and made his back ache.  Then his ribs ached too, and his head hurt, and his nose was running into his mouth and tasted funny.

“Your nose isn’t running, you’re in the shower, idiot!” James snapped.  “Okay, there, you’re mostly clean.  Now turn around and bend…oh, wow.”  James took a step back and hit the wall of the narrow shower as Sacha turned to glare at him.

“Fuck’s sake, Sacha, you look like a drowned rat!” he blurted before he could stop himself.  Yes, it was a mean thing to say, but it was _true_.  Sacha’s sodden mullet was straggly and wildly uneven, sticking to his neck and shoulder, plastered to his forehead and cheeks.  Sacha’s sullen scowl worsened the rat-like appearance.

“Are you—hhhhggkgkkkhhh.”  Sacha sniffed wetly and noisily.  “Are you making fun of my m-mullet?”  He sniffed again, then shivered a little.  “You’re—you’re so mean.”

“No, I wasn’t making fun of it!  Technically, I was just saying that you resembled a rodent dipped in water…”

Sacha sniffed and then coughed a little.  “I—hhhgggkkhh—uuuggghh—!”  His lower lip trembled and his shoulders shook again.  “Y-you’re so awful!  This isn’t romantic at all!  I h-hate you!”

James stood perplexed as Sacha began crying in earnest, shaking and shivering, sodden under the cooling spray.  “Sacha, I—please don’t cry.  It’s so awkward,” he protested.

“I d-don’t feel g-good!” sobbed Sacha, fumbling with the shower door.  “I want to g-go to b-bed!  Alone!”

“Wait a second, baby.”  James caught Sacha’s arm and had him stand in the bathroom, still blubbering, while James briskly dried him.  He followed Sacha to the bed and, finding an electric outlet for the hairdryer on the nightstand, blew Sacha’s hair dry—to unmatched proportions, even, which Sacha was unable to enjoy from his nest of pillows.

James brushed a hand across Sacha’s forehead.  “You’re burning up.  Gotta cold or something, baby.”

“’M gonna be sick,” Sacha mumbled, and James managed to shove the little plastic tub meant for ice under his head just in time.  “You’re still mean,” he added after he finished throwing up, and started to cry again.

\--

Well, now James felt like a horrible shit who couldn’t even manage a romantic weekend without insulting his lover and making him cry.  Even if his lover was a sullen shit with bad hair and possibly a virus.  But that wasn’t an excuse for making Sacha cry, so James racked his brain for ways he could apologize without actually saying he was sorry.

Sacha had fallen asleep, probably hadn’t heard James promise to go out and find him something good to eat.  Poor kid, getting sick on leave.  And then he’d have to get back on board the ship on Monday, so the whole camp would be sick before the week was out unless the virus cleared up on Sunday.  If not…James hoped the gravity function held steady.

He wandered down the road from the hotel towards the town center and its neat storefronts, intent on finding some food and maybe a little get-well gift too.  A florist pushed a freezer filled with small arrangements to the front window of his shop, but James walked on.  A chocolatier offered him a sample of her finest confections, but he merely shrugged.

Across the street, the proprietor of a lingerie shop rolled away the gate and hung a sale advertisement on the door.  James crossed the empty street to squint through the window at a lacy garter belt with matching pink stockings.  Saying “I think you’re sexy in lace” was almost as good as saying “I’m sorry I made you cry because your hair is ugly and that shower sex ended in you throwing up in the ice bucket.”  Right?

But before he could step inside the store and buy the stocking set in Flirtatious Fuchsia, a chorus of squeaks caught his attention and drew him to the store next door.  He watched through a bay window as several clerks wheeled a spacious cage filled with tiny pterosaurs up to the glass.  The little dinosaurs squeaked excitedly and fluttered about, a riot of blue, green, and red feathers filling the window.

One dino, bright blue with green-tipped wings, hooked its little claws onto a cage bar level with James’ eyes, turning its head this way and that to peer at him.  Only when a fly buzzed into his mouth did James realize he was staring open-mouthed at the tiny creatures, utterly captivated by their cuteness.

The lingerie a distant memory, James hurried inside the pet shop.  What Sacha needed, more than anything else, was a cute little friend to sit on his shoulder while he recovered and remind him of James and not make him cry.

\--

Sacha peered out from his mountain of pillows and tangled sheets, regarding him warily.

“Oh, good, you’re awake.  Are you feeling better?”  James surreptitiously dropped the bag of dino pet supplies into his backpack by the hotel room door.  He kept the dinosaur hidden behind his back.

“Still feel like crap,” grunted Sacha, “and my mouth tastes like crap.  And I have a headache from crying too much.”  But he sounded better.

James shifted his weight from foot to foot nervously.  “That’ll happen.  Glad you’re not crying anymore.  Fucking embarrassing.”

Sacha wrinkled his nose in an odd expression.  “You went out?”

“Yeah.”

“Where—um.  Did, uh, did you go get supper?” Sacha asked quickly.

“Uh, no.”  Shit.  Knew he should’ve picked up some spacesoup and astrofruit on the way back.  Because otherwise Sacha would ask…

“So where _did_ you go?” Sacha snapped, obviously expecting the worst of James, like he always did.  “Ditched me because I was _sick_ and _embarrassing_.  I see.”

“No, that is, I did get supper.”  Except he didn’t have any food other than dino feed.  “…But I ate it.”

Sacha sniffed loudly.  James couldn’t tell if the congested sound was due to an impending cry or his ailment.  “Oh, I see,” he croaked—another ambiguous, maybe-crying, maybe-sick noise.  “You’re so aw-awful you d-don’t even want to bring back something for m-me.”

“That’s not—no, I’ll go right back out and get us some really good spacesoup,” James hurried to say, frantically trying to stall more crying.

“I do like spacesoup,” sniffled Sacha, and finally the sniff sounded less ominous.

“I know, baby.  Look, actually, I went somewhere to get something.”  He cleared his throat, and felt his cheeks flush.  “So, uhhh, close your eyes.”

Sacha frowned and crossed his arms.  “Why the fuck should I?”

“Because I got a—got something special for you, you idiot,” James snarled back, trying not to clench his hands in anger, because a squished dinosaur would not be a very good present. 

“Oh!”  Sacha’s eyes, glassy from fever more than romance, widened as he finally noticed James’ hands hidden behind his back.  “You got me a present?  You serious?”

James nodded eagerly, pleased with Sacha’s shy smile, and tried to explain his subtle apology without saying it.  “Yeah, uh, you know, we’ve had a rough weekend so far, what with you getting sick and your hair being, uh, what it is, but I think we’re really close and we have this understanding where we really know what the other means even when we’re not saying it, you know?  So, you know, I got you this—this very special thing because I want us to be very close and stuff, yeah.  You and me, baby.”  Well, Sacha and James and a cute dinosaur.

“Oh, uh, okay…”  Sacha blushed a bright, sickly red and squeezed his eyes shut so tightly his whole face scrunched with the effort.

James shuffled to the edge of the bed when he was sure Sacha’s eyes were shut.  “Hold out your hand.  And no peeking.”

“No peeking,” Sacha whispered, his voice rough and tender.  He held out his right hand, palm down, fingers spread.

James glanced up at Sacha suspiciously.  How had he known to hold out his hand to receive a flying dinosaur?  Had he already seen the dino’s reflection in the mirror on the bathroom door?  But no, the angle was wrong, and Sacha would have said something right away.  Maybe this was just his weird way of accepting surprise gifts.  Carefully, very carefully, James set down the little blue dinosaur on the back of Sacha’s hand.

Even weirder, Sacha shrieked and snatched his hand back, flinging the dinosaur into the air.  For a frightening instant, James watched it spinning upwards, its eyes wide with shock, before it fluttered its wings and returned to perch on James’ hand.  James sighed in relief and stroked the back feathers, just as the store clerks had shown him.

“ _What the fucking hell is that?_ ” Sacha squawked, shaking his hand and falling back into the pillows.

“Calm down!” James barked, and Sacha stopped his thrashing to glare at James.

“What the hell is _that_?” Sacha repeated, jabbing a finger at the dinosaur.

“It’s—it’s your present,” James said defensively.  “It’s a _Nemicolopterus crypticus._  Isn’t it cute?  It’s really friendly, a great pet.”  So the pet shop clerks had assured him.

Sacha stared at the _N. crypticus_ , mouth tight and brows creased in a little frown.  “You got me a dinosaur,” he mumbled, raising his eyes to James’ briefly.  “Uh, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” James replied, waiting for Sacha to comment on the dinosaur’s cuteness.  Sacha liked cute animals.

But apparently not _this_ cute animal.  “You might as well take it back now, since, you know, we’re going to go work on fucking spaceships in a month,” Sacha continued, his arms crossed again and his expression closed.

Fuck.  James looked down at the dinosaur ruefully, realizing that Sacha was right, for once.  The dinosaur wouldn’t do very well in a space station or on a warship, especially if the gravity went on the blink again.  Good thing the lingerie store was next to the pet shop.  He could return the dinosaur and pick up a replacement gift in no time.

“I’ll get you something else,” he promised, just so Sacha knew he really meant to give him a gift.

Sacha shrugged and started bricking the pillows around him.  Within moments, James could only see the very tips of Sacha’s hideous mullet peeking out from the mound.

“Sacha?”

“Fuck off.  I don’t feel good.”

“You were well enough to receive a gift five minutes ago.  Sit the fuck up and—”  He huffed in frustration and ripped away the excess of pillows.  “What the hell are you sulking about now?” he demanded.  “I let you sleep all day, got you a cute dino in your favorite color, and we’ve still got all Sunday ahead.”  When Sacha rolled himself in the blankets and refused to look at him, James kicked the bed, shaking the mattress.  “Damn it, Sacha.”

“Thought—I thought—just, no, whatever.  It’s stupid,” Sacha mumbled, voice muted by the comforter.

“Spit it out, for fuck’s sake,” James groaned, eager to figure out what had Sacha’s panties in a twist now so he could fix it and continue with the relaxing weekend.  He tugged the blankets away, dragging Sacha halfway down the bed.

That got him a glare through Sacha’s mussed hair.  “Fine,” Sacha snarled venomously.  “I thought you were gonna give me, like, a promise ring or something.  Like in the movies.  Or like people do on Spacebook.  Okay?  Thought you wanted to make us—to be something more, but you went and got me a dinosaur.  Thanks, it’s really fucking cute.”

Sacha grabbed the blankets from James’ limp hands and buried himself in them again, while James stood shellshocked.  “Uh, what?”

“You fucking heard me,” came the muffled reply.

“A promise ring?  What, you think we’re in a romantic comedy?”

“Three gave one to his boyfriend—”

“Yeah, well, his boyfriend is the most psychotic navi I’ve seen on Spacebook.”  Copernicus, newly assigned to Space Station Four, had broken someone’s nose for messing up his hair.  The Spacebook frenzy and fallout had been epically terrifying.  And Three promised to be just as unmanageable—so they were a good match, really.

But a promise ring?  For Sacha?  What promise, exactly, when he was certain Sacha would get his ass knocked back down to Twenty-Five within a few days?  Once they were assigned to different stations, they’d likely never see each other again anyway.

Still…getting sick on leave was pretty rotten, and James _had_ made fun of his hair, which wasn’t nice.  So, it seemed a compromise was in order.  “Okay, baby, tell me what you think of this.”

“What,” Sacha bit out.

“How about I get you some promise lingerie?  And I promise we will fuck a lot and it’ll be really fun.”

Sacha’s head emerged from the blankets slowly, mullet everywhere.  He stared at James with narrowed eyes, and James stared gamely back, his best shit-eating grin pasted across his face.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.  Can—can I play with the dino before you return it?”

“Sure, here…”

“Aww, it’s cute.”

“Yeah, cutest one in the shop.”

“Cats are cuter.”

“Well, that’s kind of subjective—what are you doing—”

“Fuck, it pooped on my hair!”

“Why did you put it on your head in the first place?!”

“I wanted to get a picture of it being cute in my hair.”

“Uhhh.  You can shower alone this time.”

\--

“And then I dropped an eighteen-pound ball on Six’s left foot, and I could hear the bones crunch even though Twenty and Twenty-nine were singing a drinking song really loudly.  Here you can see Six’s pained grimace.”  Thirty smiled fondly at the picture on his tablet, and then clicked to the final photo in his new Spacebook album.  “And here’s a photo of everyone who got broken bones.  And that’s the end of my fun shore leave adventure, since I spent Sunday sobering up.”  Finished regaling Fifty with tales from the catastrophic drunk-bowling party, Thirty looked at him expectantly.  “What did you and Eight do?  Did you have fun?”

“Yeah, we had tons of fun.  We went to this pet shop where they had, like, dozens of cute pets and we played with them until one of the cats tried to eat one of the little dinos, and then the shopkeepers kicked us out.”  And after that, James had bought Sacha a sexy panty and stocking set in Bodacious Blue, Sacha’s favorite color.  The texture of the lingerie was silky and soft against Sacha’s skin, and no one could tell he was wearing his promise lingerie under his fatigues.

Yes, it had been a romantic weekend after all.


End file.
